According to

JERUSALEM — Israel, tiny and bereft of oil, has decided to embrace the electric car.

On Monday, the Israeli government will announce its support for a broad effort to promote the use of electric cars, embracing a joint venture between an American-Israeli entrepreneur and Renault and its partner, Nissan Motor Company.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, with the active support of President Shimon Peres, intends to make Israel a laboratory to test the practicality of an environmentally clean electric car. The state will offer tax incentives to purchasers, and the new company, with a $200 million investment to start, will begin construction of facilities to recharge the cars and replace empty batteries quickly.

The idea, said Shai Agassi, 39, the software entrepreneur behind the new company, is to sell electric car transportation on the model of the cellphone. Purchasers get subsidized hardware — the car — and pay a monthly fee for expected mileage, like minutes on a cellphone plan, eliminating concerns about the fluctuating price of gasoline.

Mr. Agassi and his investors are convinced that the cost of running such a car will be significantly cheaper than a model using gasoline (currently $6.28 a gallon here.)

“With $100 a barrel oil, we’ve crossed a historic threshold where electricity and batteries provide a cheaper alternative for consumers,” Mr. Agassi said. “You buy a car to go an infinite distance, and we need to create the same feeling for an electric car — that you can fill it up when you stop or sleep and go an infinite distance.”

Mr. Agassi’s company, Project Better Place of Palo Alto, Calif., will provide the lithium-ion batteries, which will be able to go 124 miles per charge, and the infrastructure necessary to keep the cars going — whether parking meter-like plugs on city streets or service stations along highways, where, in a structure like a car wash, exhausted batteries will be removed and fresh ones inserted.

Renault and Nissan will provide the cars. The chairman of both companies, Carlos Ghosn, is scheduled to attend the announcements on Monday. Other companies are developing electric cars, like the Tesla and Chevrolet Volt, but the project here is a major step for Renault, which clearly believes that there is a commercial future in electric cars.

Israel, where the round-trip commute between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem is only 75 miles, is considered a good place to test the idea, which Mr. Agassi, Renault and Nissan hope to copy in small countries like Denmark and crowded cities like London, Paris, Singapore and New York. London, which has a congestion area tax for cars, lets electric cars enter downtown and park free.

Project Better Place’s major investor, Idan Ofer, 52, has put up $100 million for the project and is its board chairman. He will remain chairman of Israel Corporation Ltd., a major owner and operator of shipping companies and refineries. “What’s driving me is a much wider outlook than Israel,” Mr. Ofer said. “If it were just Israel, I’d be cannibalizing my refinery business. I’m not so concerned about the refineries, but building a world-class company. If Israel will ever produce a Nokia, it will be this.”

Mr. Ofer has his eye on China, with its increasing car penetration, oil consumption and environmental pollution, where he has interest from a Chinese car company, Chery, for a similar joint venture.

Renault will offer a small number of electric models of existing vehicles, like the Megane sedan, at prices roughly comparable to gasoline models. The batteries will come from Mr. Agassi. The tax breaks for “clean” electric vehicles, which Israel promises to keep until at least 2015, will make the cars cheaper to consumers than gasoline-engine cars. “You’ll be able to get a nice, high-end car at a price roughly half that of the gasoline model today,” Mr. Agassi said.

He contends that operating expenses will be half of those for gasoline-driven vehicles, especially in Europe and Israel, where gasoline taxes are high. The company, and the consumers who use it, will normally recharge their batteries at night, when the electricity is cheapest, and they expect the batteries to have a life of 7,000 charges, though Mr. Agassi says he is counting on only 1,500 charges, which is roughly 150,000 miles, the life of the average car.

“Because the price of gasoline fluctuates so much during the life of a car, it’s hard to predict the cost basis for driving,” Mr. Agassi said. “But electricity fluctuates less, and you can buy it in advance, so I can give you a guaranteed price per mile, cheaper than the price of gas today.”

Mr. Agassi predicts that a few thousand electric cars will be on Israeli roads in 2009 and 100,000 by the end of 2010; Israel has two million cars on the road, and about 10 percent are replaced each year.

Mr. Agassi suggested this model for the electric car — concentrating on infrastructure rather than on car production — at a 2006 meeting of the Saban Forum of the Brookings Institution, which Mr. Peres attended. He was enthralled by the idea.

Mr. Peres, who is sometimes dismissed as a dreamer by more cynical Israelis, has in the past embraced and helped to develop some successful notions — like Israel’s nuclear weapons program. He is a strong believer in Israel’s mission to better the world, he says, and not simply sell arms to it. Israel is the 11th-largest arms exporter, as measured by dollar sales, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

Mr. Peres, who knew Mr. Agassi’s father, said in an interview that after hearing Shai Agassi speak: “I called him in and said, ‘Shai, now what?’ I said that now is the time for him to implement his idea, and I spoke to our prime minister and other officials and convinced them that this is a great opportunity.”

“Oil is becoming the greatest problem of our time,” Mr. Peres said in an interview in his office. Not only does it pollute, but “it also supports terror and violence from Venezuela to Iran.”

“Israel can’t become a major industrial country, but it can become a daring world laboratory and a pilot plant for new ideas, like the electric car,” he said.

Mr. Peres sees this project as part of his “green vision” for Israel, arguing that what the nation may lose in tax revenue it will save in oil. He also supports a larger investment in solar power, saying that “the Saudis don’t control the sun.”

Mr. Ofer wants profits, but also thinks the project will help the environment, especially in developing countries. “China is on a very dangerous march from bicycles to cars without any notion of what they’re doing to this planet in terms of air,” he said.

And in Mumbai, he said, “you can’t even see the sky.”

James D. Wolfensohn, the former World Bank president, is a modest investor in the project.

“Israel is a perfect test tube” for the electric car, he said. “The beauty of this is that you have a real place where you can get real human reactions. In Israel they can control the externalities and give it a chance to flourish or fail. It needs to be tested, and Agassi is to be commended for testing it and the Israeli government for trying it.”

- Ok, this is going to be a brave new project located in middle of several oil producing countries. It's going to be a very tough fight against oil but it will begin a brand new electric vehicles era that all countries should follow suit unless they don't have cheap source of electricity.

Oops, Singapore does not have nuclear power plant hence still depends on expensive Natural Gas to generate 80% of it's electricity demand. It will be a tough sell here but if it becomes a reality, it will be revolutionary and super COOL.

By the way, electricity does comes from other sources like Solar, Wind and etc.

According to ExtremeNano:

What do you get when you couple Ralph Lauren with Butch Cassidy? Apparently, the outcome is nothing less than a lineup of 100-percent-electric, zero-emission cars manufactured in China and poised to slink into US dealerships.

It turns out that conservation activist and former Ralph Lauren CEO Miles Rubin teamed up with actor Paul Newman to start a new car company, called Miles Automotive Group , which already produces fleet-oriented low-speed electric vehicles, or LSVs. Those who keep their ears to the ground for new developments in the electric-car arena have been picking up exciting buzz surrounding the company's line of small cars fresh from China. It isn't the engine buzz, however, since the fully electric motors in the ZX40, ZX40S, and OR70 ; are virtually silent when compared with raucous and overbearing petrols.

Current production models from Miles Automotive are already rolling up mileage at NASA, Yale, Stanford, and the U.S. Navy. All five-door hatchbacks, the cars are powered by six 12-volt batteries, two under the hood and four in the back. They also utilize a powerful DC converter and can be charged from any normal 110-volt electrical outlet. The range is only 60 to 70 miles, and the power plants yield a meager 35 mph for roughly 3.7 hours of operation before a recharge is needed. That's a far cry from the awe-inspiring Tesla Roadster, which can rocket from 0 to 60 in just 4 seconds. Yet in its move toward highway-speed electric vehicles (HSVs), Miles is betting that longer range and practical design will make an even greater environmental impact by connecting with average carbon-weary consumers. "Tesla's models, with the initial sports car priced at $100,000, are certainly well-publicized and sexy--but carry a price tag well beyond the regular guy," said Beth McGroarty, Research Director for Miles Electric Vehicle. McGroarty emphasized that Miles Automotive is "a car company building EV models a bit more for the masses.... beyond the likes of just George Clooney and Sergey Brin." The utilitarian approach to design will be carried over to the new generation of Miles EVs: Two new HSV models will be introduced as early as 2008. A rapidly changing marketplace--driven by innovation and recently approved tougher CAFE standards-- are certainly setting the stage for Miles HSVs, which will reach speeds in excess of 80 mph and travel 125 miles or more on a single charge. According to McGroarty, a trip of this length will cost a Miles HSV driver "a grand total of under $3.00. To get that kind of efficiency with a gas-powered car you'd have to get significantly better than 100 mpg." At approximately $29,000, the next-generation EV's price is also very appealing. Still, this electric mobility forecast is not without clouds. Offering consumers on-board equipment and amenities worthy of a $30,000 price tag might prove challenging and will require prompt and momentous advances in lithium-ion battery technology. For example, even with their inventive design and functionality, current Miles LSVs do not offer power upgrades or even essentials like air conditioning. Such extras are simply unsustainable given the models' power output. The purest of environmentalists might also be irked by the fact that all Miles vehicles are manufactured in China—a nation with murky environmental standards and one of the worst pollution records in recent history. Despite the hurdles, Beth McGroarty and other green-minded folks at Miles are optimistic, planning to unveil their HSV duo at the coming Detroit Auto Show and make it available to public by 2008. "The next few years will bring historic and welcome changes to the auto industry," she said, "and all-electric vehicles will be a big part of the shakeup."

- Oh ya, China may have high productivity but recent lower quality output is going to have some impact as well. It's going to be much value for money if it's produced locally with better quality to me, then to make it cheaply and send hundreds of miles to it's customers using huge amount of oil...increasing the cost of imports and total cost.

According to Yahoo!Asia News:

If motorists used rechargeable "plug-in" hybrid-electric vehicles in large numbers, the U.S. could see a significant drop in greenhouse gas emissions by the middle of the century, says a study released Thursday.

Researchers estimated that with a market share of about 60 percent or more plug-ins, the vehicles could help reduce approximately 450 million metric tons in greenhouse gas emissions a year by 2050. The reductions would be the equivalent of removing 82 million passenger cars, or about one-third of the cars currently on the road.

The study was conducted by the Electric Power Research Institute, a nonprofit research group, and the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group. It was based on an analysis of data from the federal Energy Information Agency and EPRI.

"Plug-in hybrids are a major solution to the climate change crisis that we're facing and the electric utility industry is indeed capable of taking over a large section of the fueling transportation sector without adding significant new capacity," said John Duncan, deputy general manager of Texas-based Austin Energy.

Researchers said a significant increase in plug-ins would lead to only a minor increase in demand for electricity. An increase of 7 percent to 8 percent of electric use would reduce nearly 4 million barrels of oil per day by 2050, said Mark Duvall, program manager with the Electric Power Research Institute and one of the study's authors.

The study estimated that with a more limited use of plug-ins, or about 20 percent of the market, the vehicles could remove approximately 180 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions a year by 2050.

A separate study by the organizations found that plug-in vehicles also could lead to small improvements in the nation's air quality. Most regions of the country would see improvements in ambient air quality and the reduction of pollutants, they found.

Plug-in hybrids are being developed by several automakers, including General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co., DaimlerChrysler AG and Toyota Motor Corp. The vehicles typically feature batteries that power an electric motor with an internal combustion engine used when the batteries run low.

Owners plug the batteries into a standard wall outlet to recharge it, typically at night. The study assumed that three-quarters of the charging would take place at night during the off-peak hours of the electric grid.

A number of obstacles persist for plug-ins. Automakers and battery companies have been working to improve the durability of the batteries, improve the vehicle's range and assess the impact that wide use of the vehicles would have on the nation's electric grid.

Conventional hybrid gas-electric vehicles, such as the Toyota Prius, comprise only about 2 percent of the vehicle market. General Motors, which is developing the Chevrolet Volt, a plug-in electric car with a range of 40 miles on the battery and more than 600 miles with a gas engine, has said it hopes its plug-ins can reach showrooms by 2010.

Tony Posawatz, GM's vehicle line director, said the automaker expected to begin testing advanced batteries from suppliers in coming months that could be used in the Volt.

The study was funded by a broad number of interests, including investor-owned utilities, public power agencies, state and federal agencies, public interest groups and foundations, said Steven Specker, EPRI's president and chief executive officer.

- This news comes does attract the attention of many energy crisis watchers or "peak oilers"! If the world comes with more energy efficient vehicles on the road, not only it save the Earth but also your pocket as well!! So why not?

According To Lowem--> Green Car Congress:

Asahi.com. Toyota Motor Co. will obtain permission from Japan’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport by the end of July for the testing of a prototype plug-in Prius on public roads.

Toyota will be the first car maker to obtain permission for a plug-in hybrid test in Japan. After completing the road tests, Toyota will start building a way to market the model by leasing them to public (government and municipal) offices.

According to the report, Toyota is testing a lithium-ion battery pack in the plug-in.

Earlier this year, Nikkei Business speculated that Toyota would introduce the plug-in at the Tokyo Motor Show in November.

(translation by Futoshi SATO)

- I just got word from my buddy Lowem about this news!! Thanks!! I personally feel that Plug-in will be the future mode of transportation provided they have alternative energy to power the electricity required and it must be cost effective. The cost of electricity defer from country to country depending on what source of method of power generation. Singapore uses PNG (Piped Natural Gas) to generate 80% of the total electricity use by the whole country and that alone is expensive enough to import from Indonesia. (Indonesia is a OPEC country but had been net oil importer since 2004). Other countries that utilized renewable sources such as Hydro-electric, Geothermal, Wind and Solar energy together with Nuclear power will greatly reduce the cost of electricity generation and hence in a better position to use Plug-in Electric Vehicles for the replacement of petroleum thirsty vehicles.

What the future holds for countries that have not much natural resources like Singapore?